Previews

Crash Bandicoot: Mind Over Mutant

Spiffy:

Some improvements; lots of monsters; plenty of locations.

Iffy:

Formulaic series; fundamentally a children's game.

At Sierra's recent Gamers Day, we got to check out the Wii build of the latest Bandicoot title, Crash Bandicoot: Mind Over Mutant. The team is definitely happy with the positive reception the last title, Crash of the Titans, received, as the changes here are almost entirely ones that build on the drastic changes of Titans. You'll still be "jacking" enemies, but now will have even more choices once you do so. And, of course, you'll still be playing the amazingly characterless Crash.

Crash of the Titans introduced the ability to jump onto certain larger enemies, Titans, and "jack" them. Jacking means jumping onto a beaten-into-submission foe, jamming the sentient voodoo mask Aku Aku into them, and then taking control. Crash than uses the jacked Titan as his living weapon. This gave Crash of the Titans a fresh feeling, but each Titan was little more than a power-up you had to beat up. It could get a bit... unfresh feeling.

So, with Mind Over Mutant, the jacking mechanic has been kicked into high gear. Now, you can hold onto a jacked Titan. Tuck him away in your magic backpack, and you've got him and his special abilities at your disposal until you decide to replace him. This is especially handy since Titans now have wider areas of abilities, and can be individually leveled up.

We saw individual Titans who could serve as the traditional smashers -- high hit points, high damage -- but with a wide variety of other abilities. Some Titans can turn into deadly rolling balls which Crash can balance on top of, turning stages into skateboard-like obstacle courses and 2d marble-rolling games. Some might be able to fly, or allow you to transcend the bounds of the normal action-platforming gameplay in other ways. It's nice to see these expansions of gameplay choices, which should help to make jacking Titans a really interesting expansion for the series.

Gameplay itself is largely familiar, with a wide variety of worlds to adventure through. A strong focus has been placed on making Crash more accessible, including such steps as giving players unlimited lives by default. Crash still relies on his acrobatics and speed to win fights, with a wide variety of martial-arts moves at his disposal. He can also wall-run over limited periods when needed, and, in general, be a high-energy mascot.

We saw Mind Over Mutant running on the Wii, placing it about on the mid-point of visuals we can expect from the various versions of the game. Based on that, we expect a mildly prettier version of the last game. There were some cool refraction effects through ice, and some neat environments, but this isn't going to be the game to justify a new HDTV purchase. We'll have more on Crash Bandicoot: Mind Over Mutant as the game comes closer to release.